Communication networks are widely used across many industries and sections of society. Such networks may include, for example, telecommunications networks and social media networks. The use of communication networks is growing, with continual expansion of customer bases and a steady flow of innovation providing new ways to connect and interact with other users within a network.
The communication network itself provides a framework, allowing diverse groups of individuals to form connections and exchange information within the network. Connections between individual users within the network may take various forms including friendship, professional relations, common interests, shared knowledge or backgrounds. A full service network provides a broad range of connection and communication options as well as an array of additional and value added services. Usage information may be extracted from such networks to generate a user profile, which may then form the basis of personalised service offerings to users, personalised advertising or other activity on the part of the network operator aimed at improving customer satisfaction and/or retention or other aspects of network operation.
When generating a profile for a user within a communications network such as a telecommunications network, multiple sources of data concerning the user may be available. These may include for example call usage information and uptake and usage of value added services (VAS). In addition, if a user obtains internet access via the telecommunications network, broadband usage and browsing history for the user may also be available. Social media information may be obtained through deep packet inspection, and if the user makes use of mobile payment services via a connected network device, including for example mobile wallet, then product interests for the user may also be available. For some users, sufficient information may be available to allow the inferring of user interests and preferences, which may then form the basis of the personalised service offerings and other activity discussed above. This insight may offer considerable advantages to network operators in their network management, but may only be available for a small subset of users who make the fullest use of the available network services. For a large proportion of users within the network, sufficient information to enable the extraction of user interests and preferences may not be available.